ASRock has showcased its AMD Navi 48 GPUs on the showroom floor at this year's CES trade event—only hours ago, a TechPowerUp team member familiarized themselves with Taichi, Steel Legend and Challenger options. The new models are offered up in Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 variants—these next generation cards are due to arrive later this quarter alongside RDNA 4 and FSR 4 technologies. Out of the gate ASRock representatives were keen to show off their new flagship cog/gear-themed model.

The ASRock Radeon RX 9070 XT Taichi is a very long and chunky proposition—TPU's photos depict a triple-slot design, continuing the legacy of preceding Taichi designs. ASRock has refreshed its custom shrouds and backplates for the RDNA 4 generation—the incoming RX 9070 XT Taichi is quite boxy when compared to its older sibling. Cog wheel graphics on the backplate seem to jump out more due to updated coloration/contrast. The usual Taichi triple-fan config is present here, with a smattering of RGB lighting strips spread across its shroud. Performance and quiet operating modes can be accessed via a rear switch. Another switch—placed next to the card's single 12-pin power connector—gives you the option to turn onboard LED lighting on or off.

AMD at the 2025 International CES announced the Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 desktop performance-segment graphics cards. These will be the face of AMD's next generation of gaming graphics products, and will be powered by the new RDNA 4 graphics architecture. AMD hopes to launch both cards within Q1 2025. AMD changed the nomenclature of its gaming GPUs mainly because it has made a tactical retreat from the enthusiast graphics segment, its fastest products will compete in the performance segment. From the way AMD arranged the Radeon RX 9070 series and 9060 series product stack against the backdrop of the Radeon RX 7000 series, the GeForce RTX 4000 series, and the anticipated GeForce RTX 5000 series, the RX 9070 XT will offer performance roughly similar to the Radeon RX 7900 XT in raster, with the RX 9070 being slightly faster than the RX 7800 XT. The RX 9060 XT will beat the RX 7700 XT, while the RX 9060 beats the RX 7600 XT.

With RDNA 4, AMD claims generational SIMD performance increase on the RDNA 4 compute units. The 2nd Gen AI accelerators will boast of generational performance increase, and AMD will debut a locally-accelerated generative AI application down the line, called the AMD Adrenalin AI, which can generate images, summarize documents, and perform some linguistic/grammar tasks (rewriting), and serve as a chatbot for answering AMD-related queries. This is basically AMD's answer to NVIDIA Chat RTX. AMD's 3rd Gen Ray accelerator is expected to reduce the performance cost of ray tracing, by putting more of the ray tracing workload through dedicated hardware, offloading the SIMD engine. Lastly, AMD is expected to significantly upgrade the media acceleration and display I/O of its GPUs.

AMD is expected to have a rather lean lineup of next-generation gaming GPUs powered by the RDNA 4 graphics architecture. The series is expected to debut at AMD's 2025 International CES keynote address, with product launches of the series-leading Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 performance-segment GPUs later this month. The RX 9070 should be available by late-January, although add-in board partners from China expect availability to ramp in February 2025. The series will see expansion with more announcements in March.

The RDNA 4 generation is driven mainly by two chips—the larger "Navi 48," and the smaller "Navi 44." The "Navi 48" will power the RX 9070 series, which are performance-segment and designed to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 series; but cut-down variants of the chip are also expected to power certain upper mid-range SKUs that go up against the RTX 5060 series. The "Navi 44" chip is expected to power certain high performance/price SKUs in the mid-range, which AMD will use to target price-points well under the $300-mark. This segment is expected to heat up as NVIDIA has current-generation RTX 4060 series, Intel just made a stab with the Arc B580, and is expected to launch a faster Arc B700-series SKU based on a maxed-out "BMG-G21" silicon.

AMD will continue using traditional PCI Express power connectors for its upcoming Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA 4 graphics cards, according to recent information shared on the Chiphell forum. While there were some expectations that AMD would mimic NVIDIA's approach, which requires the newer 16-pin 12V-2×6 connector for its GeForce RTX 50 series, the latest information suggests a more traditional power approach. While AMD plans to release its next generation of graphics cards in the first quarter, most technical details remain unknown. The company's choice to stick with standard power connectors follows the pattern set by their recent Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which demonstrated that conventional PCI Express connectors can adequately handle power demands up to 375 W. The standard connectors eliminate the need for adapters, a feature AMD could highlight as an advantage. An earlier leak suggested that the Radeon RX 9070 XT can draw up to 330 W of power at peak load.

Intel reportedly cited similar reasons for using standard power connectors in their Arc "Battlemage" graphics cards, suggesting broader industry support for maintaining existing connection standards. NVIDIA's different approach reportedly requires all board partners to use the 12V-2×6 connector for the RTX 50 series, removing the option for traditional PCI Express power connectors. In contrast, AMD's decision gives its manufacturing partners more flexibility in their design choices, and MBA (Made by AMD) reference cards don't enforce the new 12V-2×6 power connector standard. Beyond the power connector details and general release timeframe pointing to CES, AMD has revealed little about the RDNA 4 architecture's capabilities. Only the reference card's physical appearance and naming scheme appear to be finalized, leaving questions about performance specifications unanswered, as early underwhelming performance leaks are somewhat unreliable until final drivers and final optimizations land.

The "Navi 48" silicon powering AMD's next-generation Radeon RX 9070 series could feature AV1 hardware-accelerated encoding with support for AV1 B-Frames. In video compression, a B-frame is an intermediate frame that lacks image information, but has motion-vector and other data from the previous and next image frames (or I-frames), which helps the decoder reconstruct the image component of the frame based on temporal frame data. This is compute-intensive, but greatly reduces file-size or bitrate of the stream, as almost every other frame lacks image information. Support for AV1 B-Frame hardware-accelerated encode was sniffed out by HXL in a recent commit to one of the SDKs AMD maintains in a public repository through its GPUOpen initiative.

AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series generation powered by the RDNA 4 graphics architecture will be based almost entirely on two chips, the "Navi 48" and "Navi 44," with the latter powering mainstream and mid-range SKUs; while the former powers performance-segment ones. There is no enthusiast-segment chip this time around. The "Navi 48" is expected to feature a more advanced video encode/decode hardware than the one RDNA 3.5 comes with; and AV1 is likely to get the bulk of development as the royalty-free codec gains popularity with online video streaming services. It remains to be seen if next-generation architectures like RDNA 4 or NVIDIA's "Blackwell" support acceleration for VVC.

AMD's client computing division is expected to have an action-packed 2025 International CES. On the CPU front, the company is expected to expand its Ryzen 9000X3D family with high-core count models, such as the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D. It is also expected to introduce certain power-efficient 65 W models of its non-X3D Ryzen 9000 series "Zen 5" chips, which serve as value options within this processor generation, to try and lure buyers off the 65 W Intel Core Ultra "Arrow Lake-S" models. On the gaming graphics side, the company is expected to debut its Radeon RX 9000 series, led by the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070, both of which are based on the "Navi 48" silicon, and powered by the RDNA 4 graphics architecture.

That's not all, AMD is also expected to announce the new FSR 4 technology for gamers. Leaks describe FSR 4 as being a performance enhancement that's a generation ahead of FSR 3.x. While FSR 3.x combines super-resolution based performance enhancement, and algorithmic frame-generation that nearly doubles framerates; FSR 4 is expected to be AMD's first performance enhancement to incorporate AI to not just enhance the visual detail in super-resolution, but also to improve accuracy of frame-generation. At this point, it is not known if FSR 4 will be available as a feature at launch of the Radeon RX 9070 series. VideoCardz reports that the early-January announcements could be followed by late-January availability of the hardware.

AMD's interim RDNA 3.5 architecture will power the Radeon RX 8000 series integrated graphics in "Strix Halo" mobile processors, while the more advanced RDNA 4 architecture is reserved for the higher-tier Radeon RX 9000 series of discrete graphics, according to @9550pro on X. We previously believed that AMD's Ryzen AI MAX 300 Strix Halo processors would carry an iGPU with Radeon 8000S branding. However, at the same time, we expected the Radeon RX 8000 series of desktop GPUs to have a similar branding while being powered by RDNA 4. The new Radeon naming scheme is now transparent, thanks to the latest leaks of the naming schemes and early glimpses of reference design.

The RDNA 4-based RX 9000 series will be powered by the Radeon RX 9070 XT, built on the Navi 48 silicon. This GPU represents AMD's new focus on the high-volume midrange performance segment rather than competing in the ultra-enthusiast high-end space. The architecture promises enhanced SIMD IPC performance and a specialized ray tracing solution that significantly reduces performance overhead compared to current offerings. According to All The Watts, the RX 9000 lineup is expected to include various SKUs across different performance tiers, including the RX 9060, 9050, and 9040 series. Meanwhile, the RDNA 3.5-powered RX 8000 series will serve as a refined iteration of the current RDNA 3 generation. Still, they will be exclusive to AMD's mobile segment in the form of iGPU, integrated inside Strix Halo APU. Both RDNA 4 GPUs and RDNA 3.5-based APUs are scheduled for the CES 2025 event unveiling in January.

It turns out that the Radeon RX 8800 XT, the top SKU in AMD's next generation gaming GPU series, is actually named the Radeon RX 9070 XT. European computer hardware retailer may have leaked the name, along with that of the Radeon RX 9070 (non-XT), ahead of its January 2025 reveal. The two cards appeared in the store's search filters, where it was screengrabbed by enthusiasts. The RX 9070 XT is what was supposed to be the RX 8800 XT; while the RX 9070 is the RX 8800. Extrapolating this, the series could include the RX 9060 series, the RX 9050 series, and the RX 9040 series, says All The Watts.

What prompted this change in nomenclature probably has to do with the company's decision to withdraw from the enthusiast segment of gaming GPUs. While the RX 9070 XT technically succeeds the RX 7800 XT, a performance-segment, 1440p-class SKU, the company wouldn't want its product stack to have a "void" left by the lack of an "RX 8900 series." The company also took the opportunity to skip the RX 8000 series altogether, which probably give it room to rebadge some SKUs from the RX 7000 series over to the RX 8000 series. The RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 are based on the "Navi 48" silicon, and implement the RDNA 4 graphics architecture.